Bamboo Forest Nature Conservancy

Bamboo Forest Nature Conservancy is a new luxury lodge and small conservancy adjacent to Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary. It has ten luxury ‘nests’ which are raised up off the forest floor, to allow wildlife to pass through as unobstructed as possible. The conservancy aims to rewild 250 acres, and tigers have even been filmed walking through the property at night. For this reason, a guide escorts you between buildings if you leave your accommodation to walk to another location. Jeeps even collect you from beneath your room, before taking you out on safaris into Umred Karhandla.

The lodge has permission to conduct full day safaris into the sanctuary, one of only three vehicles per day allowed to do so. Between the safari jeeps entering the park during designated morning and evening periods, you would find yourself as practically the only vehicle in the park (bar two others)! A great team of naturalists lead safaris and other excursions, whilst there is a wellness centre with an expert yoga teacher on hand to take classes, during your downtime back at the lodge.

The Bamboo Forest Nature Conservancy is one of a new ‘Community Owned Community Operated Nature Conservancies’ (COCOONs) that are critical rewilding initiatives undertaken outside India’s Protected Area Network. The project is based on an innate belief that communities living closest to the most biodiverse spaces, deserve to be the primary beneficiaries and custodians of this biodiversity.

The aim of this initiative is to both expand the size and improve the quality of habitat available to wildlife, by encouraging local communities to convert their own marginal and failed farms back to its natural wild state. The land-holding will continue to be in the hands of the community but would serve as a biodiverse nature refuge, capable of offering communities assured livelihoods and economic security in an era of climate change. Additionally, COCOON Conservancies serve to act as effective buffers, absorbing wildlife communities that spill over from protected core areas, thus reducing human-animal conflict. By locating such conservancies in corridors, the objectives of widening and refreshing the gene pool is also met.